Jeff VanderMeer - Acceptance

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street,

London, SE1 9GF, UK

www.4thestate.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

First published in the United States by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2014

Copyright © VanderMeer Creative, Inc. 2014

Jeff VanderMeer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780007553532

Ebook edition © September 2014 ISBN: 9780007553549

Version: 2017-11-28

‘A tense and chilling psychological thriller about an unravelling expedition and the strangeness within us. A little Kubrick, a lot of Lovecraft, [ Annihilation ] builds with an unbearable tension and claustrophobic dread that lingers long afterwards’

Lauren Beukes, author of The Shining Girls

‘A lasting monument to the uncanny … you find yourself afraid to turn the page’

Simon Ings, Guardian

‘VanderMeer’s novel is a psycho-geographical tour de force, channelling Ballard and Lovecraft to instil the reader with a deep, delicious unease’

James Lovegrove, Financial Times

‘Immersive, insightful and often deeply bloody creepy, this is a startlingly good novel … the Southern Reach series will be a major work’

Will Salmon, SFX Magazine

‘A clear triumph for VanderMeer … a compelling, elegant and existential story of far broader appeal … A novel whose world is built seamlessly and whose symbols are rich and dark’

Lydia Millet, LA Times

‘A teeming science fiction that draws on Conrad and Lovecraft alike … The writing itself has a clarity that makes the abundancy of the setting more powerful’

Paul Kincaid, Sunday Telegraph

‘What a haunting book this is, lodging deep in the memory … So disquietingly strange as to defy summarisation. Read it’

Ned Denny, Daily Mail

‘The incidents pile up, building in tension and terror … More than just a horror novel; there’s something Poe-like in this tightening, increasingly paranoid focus … Cruel and exquisite’

N. K. Jemisin, New York Times

For Ann

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Praise for the Southern Reach Trilogy

Dedication

000X: The Director, Twelfth Expedition

Part I: Range Light

0001: The Lighthouse Keeper

0002: Ghost Bird

0003: The Director

0004: The Lighthouse Keeper

0005: Control

0006: The Director

0007: The Lighthouse Keeper

0008: Ghost Bird

0009: The Director

0010: Control

Part II: Fixed Light

01: The Brightness

02: The Moaning Creature

03: The Island

04: The Owl

05: The Seeker & Surveillance Bandits

06: The Passage of Time, and Pain

Part III: Occulting Light

0011: Ghost Bird

0012: The Lighthouse Keeper

0013: Control

0014: The Director

0015: The Lighthouse Keeper

0016: Ghost Bird

0017: The Director

0018: The Lighthouse Keeper

0019: Control

0020: The Director

0021: The Lighthouse Keeper

0022: Ghost Bird

0023: The Director

0024: The Lighthouse Keeper

0025: Control

0026: The Director

0027: The Lighthouse Keeper

0028: Ghost Bird

000X: The Director

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Jeff VanderMeer

About the Publisher

Just out of reach, just beyond you: the rush and froth of the surf, the sharp smell of the sea, the crisscrossing shape of the gulls, their sudden, jarring cries. An ordinary day in Area X, an extraordinary day—the day of your death—and there you are, propped up against a mound of sand, half sheltered by a crumbling wall. The warm sun against your face, and the dizzying view above of the lighthouse looming down through its own shadow. The sky has an intensity that admits to nothing beyond its blue prison. There’s sticky sand glittering across a gash in your forehead; there’s a tangy glottal something in your mouth, dripping out.

You feel numb and you feel broken, but there’s a strange relief mixed in with the regret: to come such a long way, to come to a halt here, without knowing how it will turn out, and yet … to rest . To come to rest. Finally. All of your plans back at the Southern Reach, the agonizing and constant fear of failure or worse, the price of that … all of it leaking out into the sand beside you in gritty red pearls.

The landscape surges toward you, curling over from behind to peer at you; it flares in places, or swirls or reduces itself to a pinprick, before coming back into focus. Your hearing isn’t what it once was, either—has weakened along with your balance. And yet there comes this impossible thing: a magician’s trick of a voice rising out of the landscape and the suggestion of eyes upon you. The whisper is familiar: Is your house in order? But you think whoever is asking might be a stranger, and you ignore it, don’t like what might be knocking at the door.

The throbbing of your shoulder from the encounter in the tower is much worse. The wound betrayed you, made you leap out into that blazing blue expanse even though you hadn’t wanted to. Some communication, some trigger between the wound and the flame that came dancing across the reeds betrayed your sovereignty. Your house has rarely been in such disarray, and yet you know that no matter what leaves you in a few minutes something else will remain behind. Disappearing into the sky, the earth, the water, is no guarantee of death here.

A shadow joins the shadow of the lighthouse.

Soon after, there comes the crunch of boots, and, disoriented, you shout, “Annihilation! Annihilation!” and flail about until you realize the apparition kneeling before you is the one person impervious to the suggestion.

“It’s just me, the biologist.”

Just you. Just the biologist. Just your defiant weapon, hurled against the walls of Area X.

She props you up, presses water to your mouth, clearing some of the blood as you cough.

“Where is the surveyor?” you ask.

“Back at the base camp,” she tells you.

“Wouldn’t come with you?” Afraid of the biologist, afraid of the burgeoning flame, just like you. “A slow-burning flame, a will-o’-the-wisp, floating across the marsh and the dunes, floating and floating, like nothing human but something free and floating.” A hypnotic suggestion meant to calm her, even if it will have no more effect than a comforting nursery rhyme.